Winry
by TerraCotta Bones
Summary: Postmovie. Edward and Winry, through the eyes of their daughter. 'She remembers so much that some day I think she might burst.' Winrycentric.
1. Remembrance

**Spoilers: **end of anime.

**Disclaimer: **Not mine. I'll make up some of themes, but the rest come from a list I got off of livejournal from hikusa(underscore)rgx.

**Pairing:** Edwin.

**Rating:** K/PG

**A/N:** A twist on traditional drabble/theme fic series.

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Winry

**A Fanfiction by TerraCotta Bones**

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**1. Remembrance**

I live alone.

I am sixteen years old. I live in a big yellow house with a porch and a crippled dog and my mother. (Not quite alone.) My great grandmother died last year – said she could finally bury herself instead of someone else. Almost my entire family is gone now. Great grandparents (both sides), grandparents (both sides), an uncle and – most importantly – my father.

My mother cooks, washes laundry, folds laundry, designs automail, builds automail, sells automail, goes to the market, sleeps sometimes, tells me stories, and smokes on the back porch. She thinks about the ghosts there.

(The great grandparents, grandparents, the uncle, my father.)

She should be a photograph to fill up an album. A straight back, patched overalls, ponytailed blonde hair, and a smoke trail; she's a silhouette on a creaking porch on fields that haven't changed since before she was born.

I can imagine, quite clearly, my father next to her (in the photograph at least, as that's the only place I've ever seen him). He has a ponytail, too, but with darker blonde hair; he has broad shoulders and a prosthetic hand, one arm around my mother.

He's my father and I love him. I don't know the man, but the father I love.

If I could, I would miss him.

I would miss him and the other ghosts. (Those people in the photo albums. What would it be like if we had ever met?)

I am sixteen years old, and I live alone with ghosts and a dog and my mother.

(She remembers so much that I think some day she might burst.)

I'm going to leave soon, and remember what I want.

My name is Winry, for my mother. Elric for my father.


	2. Religion

**A/N: **By the way, Den will outlive us all.

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**2. Religion.**

She was staring at me from the bottom of the hill. The air was warm from cloudless sun, and I squinted.

I hadn't really looked at her in years; I see her all the time. Like clothes. Once you have them on for a while you can't feel them any more.

Her eyes were bright blue that day.

She still looked like me, only older. Not that much older. Only seventeen years.

"Are you just going to stand there?"

A wind blew and my dress billowed around me like a flame. It was white, because it was summer and I saw a painting once of a girl in a white dress on a hill in the summer time. I couldn't quite see her face, but if I could have I thought she might look like me. Or my mother. There was a little girl next to her, so maybe I was the little girl and my mother was the woman in the white dress. It was a nice painting, moving and still at the same time.

I ran down the hill and my mother watched me. For a moment, I thought to stop and walk beside her. I kept running.

Maybe it was rude.

She had waited for me, and once I could not have moved even a step ahead without her. Now I am leaving her, if only on a long road in the middle of a nowhere place called Resembol or home. We are going to church. I know the way.

I could never actually leave.

By the time I arrived, I was panting like a dog. My mother was only a short distance behind me, though she never increased her pace. I'd looked behind me often to see if she would.

Grass pooled around the foundations of the church like quivering, mossy hand, cool and soothing green. A limb from the single charred tree had fallen down in the last thunderstorm, and there was a raking, splintered gash on the branch where it used to be. I walked, slowly, gingerly, up the few pebbles of path that had once led to the door.

My mother came up behind me as I looked inside my ghost church, hand on my shoulder like grass to this building.

Black bits of ash and the rotting woodchip remnants of a few scorched timbers were all that remained of my father's house.

"Hi, Dad, Uncle Al," I said, and stepped in.

It wasn't religion so much as faith, or love. That's all a god needs, I think, all a god is. Dad wasn't a god.

Behind me, while I followed old hallways and empty rooms, I heard my mother whispering his name, over and over, face-to-earth and ghost-to-ghost. Maybe her body would pale and levitate, if I imagined hard enough.

Instead of religion, we had my father, and the church of memory. The ground was green where he had touched his burning feet.


	3. Dog

**A/N: **For S J Smith. -wellwishing!-

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**3. Dog**

"MOOOOOM!"

She stuck her head out of the workshop door, handkerchief swinging from her head and eyes flashing. "WHAAAAAAT?" she whined back.

I beckoned her over to the couch with a rapid flutter of my hand. Den woofed, sitting next to me with his tail wagging.

Mom rolled her eyes and trotted over, wiping her hands on her overalls. "Maybe you should give up the pictures for a day. Or find a camera and _take some yourself."_

I grinned. "But yours are so good, Momma!"

"Yeah, yeah," she waved me off. "What do you want? I've got work to do."

I took a deep breath, screwed up my face so it would look supremely dramatic – lips pursed, eyebrows raised, eyeballs bulging…

"Look at the dog!"

My mother flicked her head toward Den, stared balefully, and looked back at me. Blinked. "Get to the point, you goose."

I jabbed my finger at a picture in the photo album on my lap. "Look at the picture!"

Same routine. Flick head, stare balefully, look back at me. Blink _twice._ "I'm gonna stay with what I just said two seconds ago."

I waved my hands at her frantically. "Den looks the same in every picture! Every picture! HE NEVER AGES!"

My mother blinked (blinked!), coughed, and a smile lurched onto her face like an earthquake and erupted into a rolling laugh. "Sure he does, you're just imaginin' things," she choked out, staggering back into the workshop. "You just run along and play with your pictures now, dear!"

I stuck out my tongue, and looked at Den. He woofed at me.

If only everyone could live forever.


	4. Dad

**A/N: **Anyone have ideas for themes?

This is for fathers.

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**4. Dad**

"My dad was a famous alchemist."

"My dad was a high-ranking government official."

"My dad passed the state alchemy exam when he was only twelve years old."

"My dad was in the Ishbal War."

"My dad was the Hero of the People."

"My dad was best friends with the Prime Minister."

"My dad saved whole towns. He saved Liore, and Xenotime – and a whole lot of other cities."

"My dad died for his country." Elysia's voice had a thin, bitter slant.

I was six year younger, and scoffed. "My dad didn't die for anything. Himself, maybe. If he is dead."

Night in Resembol was warm, even for summer. We were sprawled across a picnic blanket on the tallest, biggest hill in field, and the stars were twinkling at us. Elysia was amazed at the lack of light pollution; I'd seen them all before.

She'd grown up shapely – Elysia – like her mother. She had her father's eyes and what my mother called her father's "very unique…enthusiasm." Her mother was in my house with my mother; her mother was talking about our fathers with my mother; daughter outside with daughter in darkness and black mass of hand in front of face against big sky and blanket on grass; father and father like memory or glass ripping us apart and bringing us together and making us look through each other to see something else.

I look at her – Elysia – and I see someone else. I look and I see my own golden eyes, my own heart full and empty of my father.

I wanted to close my eyes – I wanted to see more light when I closed my eyes than when I opened them – and be convinced that we weren't just bones and hair and flesh, just girls and women crying into the country air. Twiddling our thumbs, the bones of our thumbs.

I had an intense feeling of restlessness.

There was nothing _to do _in Resembol.

"We're just bones." It came off philosophical.

"You mean like skeletons?" Elysia didn't miss a beat. "Like we've got no substance?"

"Well – sure."

"We do." She was so sure. I wished – but wishing never did anything except make a nice fairytale. I wished I could stop wishing.

Elysia continued, "Look at this." She held her hand up against the sky. "That's a hand right there, not a bone. And you know what?"

"What?" I was thinking of memories from photo albums that I had claimed as my own before, that I couldn't claim now.

"I don't need my dad to be alive to make me into a whole person. I'm a _hole _person – you know, hole? Like what rabbits dig? I'm a big hill, and everything inside me is a big rabbit den thing. What are they called?" I shook my head. "Well anyway, he's one of the rabbits. My dad."

I half-laughed. "You're a whole person? A _hole _person? And your dad's a rabbit?"

She let out a big, summery sigh. She seemed pleased. "I got him for a few years." If I could see her face better, I might've said she was smiling. "Can't keep waiting forever. It's one of those 'he lives in you' situations."

My hand was black and five-fingered against the sky. Not a bone, not just flesh, not just hair – all three. "I wish I could've met him."

"Who, my dad?"

I laughed. "Yes, Elysia. That's who I was talking about."

One among many things you can't find or meet in Resembol – my dad.

_Can't keep waiting forever. _

When we tiptoed back in later, I stopped at the door partway opened to the living room.

My mother was sitting at the table, bent nearly horizontal, motionless, one arm slung across her knees and one hand hiding the shadows in her face. I could see her lips. They were pressed tight. Gracia had one hand on her back.

I clenched my fist, bit my lip, and went away.

_That's a hand right there, not a bone._

My father had two hands once, then only one. He was selfish and ignorant and proud, my mother said. Now he has nothing – he doesn't even have us, his daughter and her mother. Well, he does – but we don't have him. My mother hasn't a penny to her name to pay for the toll he takes.

She's just hands on a face and a broken-bent back.

I live alone in a house on a hill.


	5. Rhythms

A/N: For those of you that know me on Livejournal, let me just explain my month and a half long absence by the fact that Livejournal is blocked in China. (OMFG! is basically what I think of that.) But! I'll be back in the lovely USA in two weeks, where I can blog to my heart's delight. Until then – enjoy, the product of a bit of spare time. I hope it makes sense.

**5. Rhythms **

The ducks and sea monsters in the bath tub were slowly falling asleep. I bobbed my head with every swirl of my mother's fingers; the smell of the shampoo drifted past my nose and made me sneeze. Occasionally, a breeze would meander through the cracked window. Mom knelt beside the tub and washed my hair in the steady rhythm that mothers do, working up to the great finish of bed time and lights out. It was warm inside the steamy bathroom.

That night, I remember, I was particularly sleepy.

"I'm going on a long trip soon, sweetie," Mom murmured.

I yawned, a big, long drag on the perspiring air. "What do you mean?"

"I'm going away for a long time."

"How come?"

Here, she paused. The motion of her hands scrubbing my hair almost put me back to sleep. "I need to do some research. And it's been a long time since I've traveled anywhere."

It wasn't much of a reason, but I was three years old. She probably thought I wouldn't remember. When she tucked me in that night, she kissed me on the forehead like she usually did, and then on the nose, and then on both cheeks. I giggled because kisses always felt so funny.

"Goodnight, baby," she said.

She was gone by the end of the month.

Granny held my hand as we stared out the window after her. She looked down at me through her tiny spectacles and said, "She misses your daddy and your uncle very much, you know."

"Is she going to find them?"

Granny's face fell. "I don't think so. But she wants to look for them."

"Oh," I said.

When Mom was in the doorway, ready to leave, she'd turned back around and hugged me. She almost scared me with her big, shiny blue eyes. "I love you," she said.

I wonder if she thought I wouldn't remember.


	6. Homesick

A/N: Fanfiction is love.

**6. Homesick**

The power lines fly by in a whir; an overhanging tree branch flicks my window. I wake up reluctantly. The walls are slicked in light peach tones; the seats cushions are uncomfortably stiff. My whole life is squished inside a worn out, canvas backpack. I'm using it as a pillow. My boots shed mud on the seat from where they are propped on the arm rest, but I could care less. More often, I'm concerned with how to position my head so it won't rest against the rattling window.

This is a train ride to nowhere. It's the same as every other train ride, and it's going to take forever. I can't sleep the whole time. I'd like to think on something else – the next town or the one before – but for some reason my mind jumps to home. If I'm hungry, I whimper at the thought of my mother's scrambled eggs or her apple pie. I think of the way sheep scuttle across a road; I think of the way the stairs creaked in my yellow house when I went to bed.

I miss my mother terribly. We've followed the same pattern for generations now – families being born, families falling apart, families trying to go home.

I wonder if my father ever missed my mother like this, while riding on a train. I wonder if something would remind him of her – a passing girl, an article on automail – and if he would suddenly think, _Oh, my God. Winry. _But she says he wasn't a religious man.

I wonder if he thought he would ever see her again. I hope he did, for her sake.


	7. In His Stead

A/N: Attempts at subtlety here. O.o Also, sorry at being random and confusing – hopefully I'll get things explained soon.

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7. In His Stead

There is a card for everything in this world. There is a card for birthdays, for holidays, for condolences, for just saying hello, for nothing at all.

How there are any more cards under the sun than the cards in this tiny shop, I don't know. My mother's birthday is in two weeks, and the first thing I always do is buy the card. A whole aisle of possibilities doesn't help.

I feel a little guilty, but I keep thinking back to the stacks of postcards next to the register and the bored-to-tears cashier, whose only entertainment is my restless meandering throughout the store. I could grab a postcard (the most interesting part of the cashier's day, I'm sure) and scribble on the back, _Dear Mom. Wish you were here. Happy birthday! Love, Winry. _

When you get down to it, that's all I want to say to her.

_Dear Mom,_

_Wish you were here. _

_Happy birthday! _

_Love,_

_Winry_

P.S. It's been almost a year. Sorry, but I'm still not coming home.


	8. Sewing Patterns

A/N: Oh, I am getting so creative with these titles now that I'm making these things up from the top of my head. Interesting the way this one turned out, too.

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8. Sewing Patterns

"Your dad used to get so mad when anyone mentioned his father."

I leaned back into my chair, contemplating this. Then I tipped Past the Point of No Return and nearly rocked myself to the floor.

Mom laughed at me. "Be careful with those rocking chairs. It takes a bit of grace, you know."

I made a whining sound. "Mama! I could have fallen to certain doom and you just _laugh!" _

She smiled, if only to the tangle of yarn and knitting needles she was trying to maneuver. "Well, I think first I would make sure my poor, sweet baby was all right, and then I would laugh."

I let loose a resounding harrumph, and she giggled.

For a while, I tried to focus on my own knitting disaster. Cicadas crooned in the trees at the bottom of the hill, and the heady late afternoon sun baked the air. My lap was warm from the fuzz of my mother's latest scheme – learning to knit in midsummer – but I had iced lemonade and an old, creaking porch to protect me. Resembol was, as always, peaceful. When I looked up, I saw a herd of sheep cresting a ridge in the distance.

"How come Dad got so angry?"

Mom's fingers stilled for a moment. She looked pensive. "I don't know if he hated him, but he didn't talk about it much. He was really young when his dad left. I always thought he was mad at him for abandoning his mom to take care of two little kids by herself."

It was another sad story, another drop of bitterness to add to the pool. I wondered if my family collected these things for fun. "And then she died."

"Yes, I'd say that was the beginning of it." Mom pulled at a knot in her scarf-like creation. "And I'd say this is one of my poorer ideas, wouldn't you?"

I nodded vehemently and smiled. Sometimes, Mom could watch the whole world go by and not see a single thing. But then, sometimes she saw things without even looking.

"I did always wonder," she started and paused, deliberating. I waited.

"What?"

"I always wondered if you'd be angry at him. Your dad, I mean. The same way he was angry at his."

A grasshopper hopped across the weathered floor boards. Her voice sounded so small.

I tried to collect myself.

"I don't think I can reasonably be angry at him. Nothing to it, you know? I wouldn't get anywhere like that. I mean, I've always wanted to know exactly…but I like to think he had good reasons." Mom and Granny didn't talk about stuff like that, whether because they didn't know or didn't care to relate I wasn't sure. "It sounds so strange because I've never even met him, but – I just—"

I trailed off. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mom turn to give me her full attention.

A wispy cloud passed over the sun, and, for a moment, it was cool.

"I wish I could bring him back."


	9. Toxins

**A/N: **Winner of Third Place for the prompt "smoke" at Livejournal's fma_fic_contest community!

**9. Toxins **

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I suppose it reminds her of Granny.

Wisps of cigarette smoke curled into the chill evening air. I watched them and exhaled slowly, pursing my lips to imitate the smoke patterns. My breath made swirls in the air. Mom smiled at me.

"Did you enjoy the movie?" she asked.

Snapshot: Winry, my mother, but older, her flaxen hair swooped up with a pin, a cigarette perched between her lips. Ten years down the road, maybe there'd be glasses and wrinkles, too.

"It had a happy ending." The movie was a romance, an adventure, a drama, black-and-white. It didn't really matter.

She lifted the cigarette to her lips, breathed in, and breathed out. "It certainly was nice."

Staring out over the patio railing, she didn't see what I saw. I saw the elegantly dressed couples and friends pour out of the theater the story below, the slick black taxis pull away into a road bright with headlights, and the night market across the way fill with chattering teenagers and tourists. Occasionally, as now, her thoughts wandered. Inside that cigarette were the tastes and the feel of all the years behind her – the boy, his brother, the family, the everything she lost.

I was fifteen years old. This time next year, I would leave her (just like everyone else) to find out where the smoke was coming from. The fire that burned down that house in Resembol still raged, even if no one ever saw it. It burned through the grass, to the yellow house down the road; it ate up the rafters and blew out the windows; it charred the rocks and trees and raced down the railroad tracks; it flew all over the country, covering my mother in a haze, covering me. I can breathe it in and choke.

But I needed to know. To me, those boys, or men, lived only inside her. They could've been dreams she invented to help me go to bed at night. They could've been dreams purely for her. But why are people startled at the gold in my eyes? What happened that no alchemy book I read could ever tell me?

Where is my father? Where is my uncle? Why did they leave?

The cold seeped through my gloves, through my boots, bit my nerves.

If you close your eyes, smoke isn't beautiful anymore. It doesn't lick through the air; it doesn't waft out of parted pink lips. Cigarette smoke is acrid, cloying. Close your eyes, and it invades you like grief, breaks you down into pieces, or memories, each more discouraging than the last.

I should be proud. My mother named me Winry. I'm not her living proof that Edward Elric ever existed, or ever loved her, or ever made a difference in this world. I'm just her daughter.

I never told her that I started to study alchemy.

I took a deep breath. The cold air splintered in my throat.

Some people cry.

My mother, Winry Rockbell, smokes cigarettes.


End file.
